also sprach Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <tolimar@debian.org> [2009.11.07.0040 +0100]:
> One should also consider, that the current practice to be added as
> partner was long term support, not a one time act.
The donations have been going on for four years, and the reason
we're adding them to the partners page is because we would like to
continue doing so.
> I also don't think, that financial donors should be added by
> people associated / involved with the donor and really think the
> texts should be written and added by someone else to avoid
> conflict of obligations.
Has this been practice for all the other partners?
Feel free to rework the texts. As I state below, in four years noone
in Debian has seen the need to mention the contributions by the two
publishers, until I stepped up to take care of it (because the
publishers complained and wondered why they should continue). Please
don't file this under conflict of interests. We are (luckily) not
Wikipedia.
> Before adding any new partners, we should first find a consensus
> about criteria, not only about financial donors, but for the other
> partners as well.
Let's discuss. But let's not postpone giving credit until the
potentially lengthy process of us agreeing is over.
However, as stated below, we need to know sooner.
> I would furthermore like to discuss, if financial donors can be
> considered as partners at all. In my understanding "partnership"
> is an active collaboration which I don't see in money donations.
If I look into the partners listing, I wonder how many of those are
"active collaborations". There's really not much of a difference in
a hoster donating hosting space, a CD publisher donating CDs,
a company buying hardware, or someone else donating money.
> I'm not yet sure, if want money donors to be listed at all (since
> I don't know how to create a fair listing), but I really think
> they belong more to the donations page, than to our partners page.
One-time donations, maybe. The donations page is possibly our most
boring page. It provides *zero* incentive to donate, because all you
get is a single line with a link. Every donation drowns in the list
and gets assimilated to all the others.
Anyway, we're talking about a deal here: every book sold gets Debian
cash. The amounts that have amassed well exceed 20'000€. I think
that puts them high up on the list.
My situation is as follows: the book is going to go into press in
Q1/2010, and it'll either say "we donate 1€ of every book sold to
Debian", or it won't. The first edition said so, and both publishers
kept the promise, but Debian didn't even bother listing them as
donors. Either this gets changes and the donations get recognised
appropriately, or we'll simply discontinue the donations.
Discussing first until we all agree does not acceptably fit into the
schedule. If this is what you see us do, we'll have little other
option than to discontinue.
Anyway, instead of
The following organisations have donated money to the Debian
Project as one way of contributing through the Debian Partners
Program.
I suggest introducing financial partners as:
The following organisations share revenues of their Debian-related
products with the project.
or just drop the introduction.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@d.o> Related projects:
: :' : proud Debian developer http://debiansystem.info
`. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck http://vcs-pkg.org
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
"first get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure."
-- mark twain
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